This is what we call the Devachanic state, the reward of the personality, and it is on this old teaching that the hazy Christian notion of Paradise was built, borrowed with many other things from the Egyptian Mysteries, wherein the doctrine was enacted. And this is the meaning of the passage quoted in Isis. The Soul has triumphed over Apophis, the Dragon of Flesh. Henceforth, the personality will live in eternity, in its highest and noblest elements, the memory of its past deeds, while the “characteristics” of the “Dragon” will be fading out in Kâma Loka. If the question be asked, “How live in eternity, when Devachan lasts but from 1,000 to 2,000 years,” the answer is: “In the same way as the recollection of each day which is worth remembering lives in the memory of each one of us.” For the sake of an example, the days passed in one personal life may be taken as an illustration of each personal life, and this or that person may stand for the Divine Ego.
To obtain the key which will open the door of many a psychological mystery it is sufficient to understand and remember that which precedes and that which follows. Many a Spiritualist has felt terribly indignant on being told that personal immortality was conditional; and yet such is the philosophical and logical fact. Much has been said already on the subject, but no one to this day seems to have fully understood the doctrine. Moreover, it is not enough to know that such a fact is said to exist. All Occultist, or he who would become one, must know why it is so; for having learned and comprehended the raison d'étre, it becomes easier to set others right in their erroneous speculations, and, most important of all, it affords one an opportunity, without saying too much, to teach other people to avoid a calamity which, sad to say, occurs in our age almost daily. This calamity will now be explained at length.
One must know little indeed of the Eastern modes of expression to fail to see in the passage quoted from the Book of the Dead, and the pages of Isis, (a) an allegory for the uninitiated, containing our Esoteric teaching; and (b) that the two terms “second death” and “Soul” are, in one sense, blinds. “Soul” refers indifferently to Buddhi-Manas and Kâma-Manas. As to the term “second death,” the qualification “second” applies to several deaths which have to be undergone by the “Principles” during their incarnation, Occultists alone understanding fully the sense in which such a statement is made. For we have (1) the death of the Body; (2) the death of the Animal Soul in Kâma Loka; (3) the death of the Astral Linga Sharîra, following that of the Body; (4) the metaphysical death of the Higher Ego, the immortal, every time it “falls into matter,” or incarnates in a new personality. The Animal Soul, or lower Manas, that shadow of the Divine Ego which separates from it to inform the personality, cannot by any possible means escape death in Kâma Loka, at any rate that portion of this reflection which remains as a terrestrial residue and cannot be impressed on the Ego. Thus the chief and most important secret with regard to that “second death,” in the Esoteric teaching, was and is to this day the terrible possibility of the death of the Soul, that is, its severance from the Ego on earth during a person's lifetime. This is a real death (though with chances of resurrection), which shows no traces in a person and yet leaves him morally a living corpse. It is difficult to see why this teaching should have been preserved until now with such secrecy, when, by spreading it among people, at any rate among those who believe in reincarnation, so much good might be done. But so it was, and I had no right to question the wisdom of the prohibition, but have given it hitherto, as it was given to myself, under pledge not to reveal it to the world at large. But now I have permission to give it to all, revealing its tenets first to the Esotericists, and then when they have assimilated them thoroughly it will be their duty to teach others this special tenet of the “second death,” and warn all the Theosophists of its dangers.
To make the teaching clearer, I shall seemingly have to go over old ground; in reality, however, it is given out with new light and new details. I have tried to hint at it in the Theosophist as I have done in Isis, but have failed to make myself understood. I will now explain it, point by point.
The Philosophical Rationale of the Tenet.
(1) Imagine, for illustration's sake, the one homogeneous, absolute and omnipresent Essence, above the upper step of the “stair of the seven planes of worlds,” ready to start on its evolutionary journey. As its correlating reflection gradually descends, it differentiates and transforms into subjective, and finally into objective matter. Let us call it at its north pole Absolute Light; at its south pole, which to us would be the fourth or middle step, or plane, counting either way, we know it Esoterically as the One and Universal Life. Now mark the difference. Above, Light; below, Life. The former is ever immutable, the latter manifests under the aspects of countless differentiations. According to the Occult law, all potentialities included in the higher become differentiated reflections in the lower; and according to the same law, nothing which is differentiated can be blended with the homogeneous.
Again, nothing can endure of that which lives and breathes and has its being in the seething waves of the world, or plane of differentiation. Thus Buddhi and Manas being both primordial rays of the One Flame, the former the vehicle, the upâdhi or vâhana, of the one eternal Essence, the latter the vehicle of Mahat or Divine Ideation (Mahâ-Buddhi in the Purânas), the Universal Intelligent Soul—neither of them, as such, can become extinct or be annihilated, either in essence or consciousness. But the physical personality with its Linga Sharîra, and the animal soul, with its Kâma,[844] can and do become so. They are born in the realm of illusion, and must vanish like a fleecy cloud from the blue and eternal sky.
He who has read these volumes with any degree of attention, must know the origin of the human Egos, called Monads, generically, and what they were before they were forced to incarnate in the human animal. The divine beings whom Karma led to act in the drama of Manvantaric life, are entities from higher and earlier worlds and planets, whose Karma had not been exhausted when their world went into Pralaya. Such is the teaching; but whether it is so or not, the Higher Egos are—as compared to such forms of transitory, terrestrial mud as ourselves—Divine Beings, Gods, immortal throughout the Mahâmanvantara, or the 311,040,000,000,000 years during which the Age of Brahmâ lasts. And as the Divine Egos, in [pg 518] order to re-become the One Essence, or be indrawn again into the Aum, have to purify themselves in the fire of suffering and individual experience, so also have the terrestrial Egos, the personalities, to do likewise, if they would partake of the immortality of the Higher Egos. This they can achieve by crushing in themselves all that benefits only the lower personal nature of their “selves” and by aspiring to transfuse their thinking Kâmic Principle into that of the Higher Ego. We (i.e., our personalities) become immortal by the mere fact of our thinking moral nature being grafted on our Divine Triune Monad, Âtmâ-Buddhi-Manas, the three in one and one in three (aspects). For the Monad manifested on earth by the incarnating Ego is that which is called the Tree of Life Eternal, that can only be approached by eating the fruit of knowledge, the Knowledge of Good and Evil, or of Gnosis, Divine Wisdom.
In the Esoteric teachings, this Ego is the fifth Principle in man. But the student who has read and understood the first two Papers, knows something more. He is aware that the seventh is not a human, but a universal Principle in which man participates; but so does equally every physical and subjective atom, and also every blade of grass and everything that lives or is in Space, whether it be sensible of it or not. He knows, moreover, that if man is more closely connected with it, and assimilates it with a hundredfold more power, it is simply because he is endowed with the highest consciousness on this earth; that man, in short, may become a Spirit, a Deva, or a God, in his next transformation, whereas neither a stone nor a vegetable, nor an animal, can do so before they become men in their proper turn.
(2) Now what are the functions of Buddhi? On this plane it has none, unless it is united with Manas, the conscious Ego. Buddhi stands to the divine Root Essence in the same relation as Mûlaprakriti to Parabrahman, in the Vedânta School; or as Alaya the Universal Soul to the One Eternal Spirit, or that which is beyond Spirit. It is its human vehicle, one remove from that Absolute, which can have no relation whatever to the finite and the conditioned.